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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26068264">the smoke that roams</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/deerscarer/pseuds/deerscarer'>deerscarer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>blue and permanent [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Black Sails</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftercare, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Codependency, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gentleness, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-Established but Developing Relationship, Pre-Series, Rough Sex, Sleepy Sex, Threesome - F/M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:20:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,686</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26068264</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/deerscarer/pseuds/deerscarer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>But to deny him feels like shying away from the truth of him, somehow. Of his vulnerability, the things he lets them see. The best Jack can do is to look at him as he is and not flinch away.</i>
</p><p>Pre-series, a sequel to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25757884">blue and permanent</a>.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>"Calico" Jack Rackham/Charles Vane, Anne Bonny/"Calico" Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny/"Calico" Jack Rackham/Charles Vane, Anne Bonny/Charles Vane</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>blue and permanent [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1892200</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>96</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the smoke that roams</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'M BACK in the fandom with two canon and genuinely perfect thruples, aggressively shipping the dysfunctional, non-canon one. The first fic was how Vane would care for Jack and Anne, and this one is how they would care for him. Title is from Pablo Neruda's "<a href="https://apoemaday.tumblr.com/post/181902731572/dont-go-far-off">Don't Go Far Off</a>." </p><p>Trigger warning for unspecified pre-fic abuse and potentially unhealthy coping mechanisms involving sex. I didn’t put on the archive warning for graphic depictions of violence because no-one gets killed or injured on-screen, but there’s a hurt/comfort scene with blood and mild injury.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jack is studying the scrolls and leaves of the moulding on the ceiling. </p><p>He’s thinking, but not too seriously. Anne is curled up on his side. She was awake too, last he checked, but lazing, her eyes half-mast and sleepy. </p><p>It’s nice. The cool dark of the room, the quiet, her bird bones folded against his. But Jack’s been awake for an hour now. Grey watery light pools at the window. Outside he can hear merchants opening their stalls, men shouting. Time to get up. </p><p>“All right,” he whispers cheerily, tapping her side.</p><p>Anne doesn’t move. </p><p>Jack taps again. </p><p>When it’s clear her dead weight is the result of choice rather than misunderstanding, he worms out from under her, escaping with a mostly dignified shimmy. </p><p>He searches for his clothes as quietly as possible, avoiding the parts of the floor that creak, but it doesn’t really matter. Charles is awake too, and even less pleased with the hour than Anne. He scowls, lifting her and placing her on his side instead, without much thought.</p><p>“The fuck you going?” His voice is subsonic.</p><p>Jack stuffs his feet in his boots and buckles his belt. He points to the shutters with a questioning raise of his brows, makes like he’s going to open them.</p><p>“Fuck off.”</p><p>These days it’s nearly impossible to trick them—except before noon. It’s the little things. </p><p>“Work, Charles,” Jack tells him. He straightens his hat in the very blurry mirror; the finishing touch. “No rest for the wicked.”</p><p>“Go,” Anne grumbles, turning into Charles’s chest. Jack comes over to give her a kiss on the head. </p><p>“Don’t wait up.”</p><p> </p><p>It’s inconvenient, how much he thinks about them. When he’s with them he can’t look away. When he’s not, he’s daydreaming about what they’re up to. </p><p>Shaded in slats of afternoon light, maybe. Tucked in a corner, mostly clothed, Charles two fingers deep and working her with lazy, practiced ease.</p><p>That time Jack remembers, absurdly, a half-eaten mango on the table. He’d wondered which one of them had been carving it, and which convinced the other to leave it behind.</p><p>It’s rare that Anne and Charles interact that way. Especially without Jack around. But Anne seems to appreciate that Charles is no nonsense, and better at that particular act than Jack, no doubt. And Charles—Jack’s beginning to suspect he <em> likes </em> that Anne never reciprocates. That there’s a kind of feral enjoyment there, knowing that he could give her the orgasm of her life and she’d still let him die hard. </p><p>“You Rackham?” a voice asks in a heavy accent.</p><p>“Yes.” Jack reorients himself to the stink of the camp and the glaring sun admirably quickly, he thinks, given that he’s halfway hard in his pants. </p><p>The tent flap rises and a man emerges, all sunburnt skin and stringy hair. Jack takes in his tattered naval uniform and manages to rein in his sneer. </p><p>The man says nothing else, holding out his leathery palm for coin.</p><p>Jack puts on his best smile. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”</p><p>The things he does for love.  </p><p> </p><p>Night has fallen by the time he makes the hike back up Nassau. </p><p>As usual he took slightly longer than he’d meant to and is forced to navigate home by memory, his boots slipping in the cold sand of the dunes. He’s strangely grateful to make out the glow of town in the distance, the windows and candle lamps lighting the street. </p><p>Inside the brothel is hazy with smoke, the smell of spilled rum and candle wax and warm bodies. </p><p>Jack finds them in their usual dark blue-green corner, slung in boughs of ivy. Charles’s arms are spread on the back of the bench; Anne is slouched in his space. His arm is not quite around her, their bodies are not quite touching, but their relationship is clearly intimate.</p><p>Sometimes Jack still has to quell down a little tremor of <em> something </em> when he sees them. It’s hard to extricate fear from desire. Especially when they’re looking at him as they currently are, as they often do—half bored, mostly annoyed.</p><p>Jack gives the parrot squawking at the bar a wide berth and takes a seat in the third chair at the table. His hands itch to pour himself a drink, but there are only two mugs.</p><p>“Where’ve you been?” Anne looks stunning in the candlelight. And angry.</p><p>“I told you not to wait up.”</p><p>“Yeah,” she says. “Twelve hours ago.”</p><p>Jack rips into a piece of crusty bread left on one of their plates. Charles slides his cup in front of him. Anne is focused only on her anger.</p><p>“Where were you?”</p><p>Her reaction is stemming, Jack understands, from worry. Which makes the next part somewhat harder to navigate, seeing as how he can’t help being excited and not regretful at all. </p><p>“I was at the Wrecks.” </p><p>“The Wrecks,” she repeats.</p><p>“Yes. Where I was pursuing a very promising lead.”</p><p>Charles snorts, drumming his fingers on the bench. His disinterest is profound. “No money in opium.”</p><p>“Actually there is, Charles, but that’s not what I was after. Admirable guess, though.”</p><p>“A lead on, what then? A ship?”</p><p>“Yes. I understood from a mutual friend that there’s a new recruit on the island with information that might be valuable.”</p><p>“A mutineer.” Charles’s voice drips with suspicion.</p><p>“A deserter. Fresh off the<em> bateau</em>.”</p><p>“And you went without us,” Anne presses. “To the Wrecks.”</p><p>“Yes. That was somewhat the point.”</p><p>Anne leans in, as conspiratorial as she is enraged. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”  </p><p>From the angry slant of Charles’s mouth, he seems to be wondering the same thing.</p><p>“Well, no. Not entirely. As I’ve tried to explain before, I’m positive those wretches down there have more useful information than you two seem to believe, and I don’t very well think they’d volunteer it, with you-” he gestures between them, at their air of absolute violence. </p><p>“And one of them told you about a ship?” Charles attempts to cut to the point, as always.</p><p>“Yes. Which I’ll happily share with you later, when we’re not in a room full of-” Jack wheels his finger around with a very small but explosive movement, “literally every one of our competitors, can we change the subject?”</p><p>“No. I’ll hear it now.” But Anne lowers her voice, meeting him halfway.</p><p>Jack makes a production of being very put-upon, but his insides squirm happily. He leans in. “The <em> Saint-Antoine</em>.”</p><p>Their expressions are flat. This is not a promising start.</p><p>“The <em> Saint-Antoine</em>,” Jack presses. “Not a blue-blooded or rich as a galleon, obviously, but a prize of significant value, is set to pass through these waters in less than a month’s time.”</p><p>“We know this,” Charles says, but Jack can tell he’s listening. Everyone knows about <em> Saint-Antoine</em>. And about the absolute shitshow it’s going to cause when it tries to sneak past Nassau in a few weeks, keeping ahead of fall storms.</p><p>“I have it on good authority,” Jack continues, “that her schedule has been accelerated.” He leans in closer, smiling. Can’t help being a snake oil salesman, even to them. “That her crew is making the run two weeks early, to avoid any... entanglements.”</p><p>Anne looks dubious, but Charles is grinding his teeth, processing. Jack can see it. </p><p>“Confirm it! If you want to. You know who to ask. But not too loudly. Last thing we need is competition.” He raises a finger at one of the waitresses.</p><p>“I will,” Anne says darkly, but Jack can tell he’s already softened Charles, which is enough. </p><p>“This is my job,” Jack tells them both before placing his order. “I’d appreciate it if you’d just let me do it.”</p><p>He knows he did good work today. Even if it doesn’t pan out, on a professional level, an opportunity like this simply can’t be ignored. Anne will get over it; Charles has already made up his mind. He just doesn’t know it yet. </p><p>And on a personal level—just a shot at this kind of money? Jack’s fairly certain he’s going to get a handjob for this later. At least. Maybe even more. He’s been looking forward to that all day. If they're going to take a while to catch up, he’s rather willing to wait and play along.</p><p> </p><p>Later, Charles is off doing whatever he does, and Jack has stolen his seat. He is still, very patiently, waiting for his food to arrive, though that patience is fast running thin. </p><p>Anne is deep in her cups. Deeper than Jack had realized, at first. She’s been looking at him for a while now, which Jack is beneficently willing to ignore. He doubts she wants him to notice, and he doesn’t want her to stop. </p><p>“Thank you,” Jack says when one of the girls, finally, places down the soup he’d asked for.</p><p>“Next time bring me,” Anne tells him once she’s gone, her voice slightly slurred. </p><p>It’s hard to hear her over the grind of music, the shrieks of laughter, but Jack doesn’t miss a word.</p><p>He looks at her. </p><p>“Don’t go,” Anne says. </p><p>Jack smiles tightly. No one’s paying attention to them, literally no one spares them a glance, so he sneaks an arm around her waist. Give her a short squeeze. </p><p>It’s hard to speak. </p><p>“Where would I go without you?” he manages finally.</p><p> </p><p>Later still, Jack does get the handjob. It’s a covert kind of thing in a dark corner of the hallway, Charles waiting by the door, like an animal, for him to finish putting Anne to bed. </p><p>After the handjob he gets even more, inside the bedroom this time, a hand clamped over his mouth so he doesn’t wake her. And the next morning when he tries to get out of bed Charles hauls him back in again, rolls on top of him with the full weight of his body.</p><p>He gropes Jack over his clothes. His hands are heavy, invasive; no discernible motive or intent, really, except that groping Jack makes him hard. </p><p>It feels something like being manhandled by a bear. Jack never grows tired of it. He likes Charles like this. Bed warm, hair messy, too muzzy with sleep and single-minded for sex to communicate. </p><p>“What’s the plan?” he asks, knowing full well.</p><p>Charles was mostly hard before he even got started but he ignores Jack, takes his time feeling him up until he’s satisfied, then he kneels, rolls him on his stomach, pulls his hips up.</p><p>Jack used to think Charles didn’t let him clean up after because he’s disgusting and likes the idea of leaving him sloppy—which isn’t exactly untrue. But there are other benefits. This way Jack’s still slick from the night before, and there’s no need for supplies or delay, and Charles can briefly finger him with the usual medical sort of detachment and get directly to the part where they’re fucking. </p><p>It’s all very practical.</p><p>“All right,” Jack breathes. When he shifts like he might get up or at least rearrange, Charles grabs his arm and pins it behind his back, then the other too. He forces a curve in his spine—Jack has the instinct to struggle, but then Charles is already working inside of him, working deeper still with a kind of ruthless inevitability.</p><p>It’s too much, just on the right side of painful, but Jack likes mornings like this. Pleasantly helpless, feeling Charles coming awake while he fucks him. If Charles can be counted on for anything, it’s this: a hard, steady pace, even when he’s tired, especially when he’s tired, like his sleepiness only makes him better at knowing what bodies want. The pull and drag. The unbearable fullness of it. </p><p>Charles leans back in place and rolls, powerful enough to shift Jack with it, and Jack’s jaw goes slack. His breath puffs into the mattress. He can feel how hard he’s going to come with a distant, awed delight.</p><p>Then—the door bursts open. Anne’s back, looking for- something. She doesn’t really give them a second glance, but Charles stills anyways. </p><p>Jack grits his teeth. Winces. He retrieves one of his arms and props himself up, feeling very put out.</p><p>It’s one thing for him to convince his body, through arousal and sheer force of will, to accept that all this is a pleasurable thing. It’s another for Charles to just fucking <em> sit </em> there.</p><p>“Jesus, Charles-”</p><p>“Coin,” Anne demands, yanking open drawers, not fully closing them.</p><p>“Left,” Charles tells her.</p><p>“Can’t do both at once?” Jack cranes back to look at him. “I understand it must be difficult for you.”</p><p>Charles gives him a half-hearted slap on the flank, not really listening.</p><p>“How much?” Anne asks. She’s two seconds into counting and already annoyed.</p><p>“Six hundred eighty.” Jack’s really trying not to sound moody. “Give or take. What could you possibly need it all for?”</p><p>“Supplies.” The coins click as she pushes them across her palm, counting them anyways. Then, “Info was good.”</p><p>There’s a heavy pause. </p><p>“The info.” Jack’s honestly kind of surprised, despite himself.</p><p>Anne gives him one of her almost-smiles. She drops the coins back in the purse and sits at his side and, god bless, spits in her hand and reaches under. Starts jerking him off. </p><p>Jack’s breath fails. His stomach flutters. That helps. That’s good. Something about how good it feels must measure in his body, because it’s like Charles remembers he’s there, and he starts fucking him again. Not quite as hard, or quite as interested, but good enough.</p><p>“Bad weather to the south. Captain’s in a rush,” Anne says, not to Jack. “Not much for lookouts, I imagine.”</p><p>“Flint know?” Charles asks, barely breaking pace.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Eleanor?”</p><p>Jack can’t see Anne’s face, but Charles can, and he must like what he sees because his hips fucking <em> snap</em>.</p><p>“How soon can they be ready?” </p><p>Jack understands his concern; the men have been drunk and stoned on the beach for a few weeks now. But generally speaking, with Charles and Anne breathing down their necks, they can be roused to action quickly enough. Especially when there’s a small fortune in French gold on the line.</p><p>“A few days,” Anne says. “Maybe tomorrow.”</p><p>Jack can’t see Charles’s face, but he can see Anne’s. The almost-hunger excitement she reserves only for Charles.</p><p>Charles flips Jack over on his back. </p><p>He drags him down the mattress, folds him in two, hitches him up and fucks into him so deep that it pushes the air out of Jack’s lungs. </p><p>Jack’s still reeling and Charles hunches over him, still inside of him, his thumbs digging painfully behind his knees, the tips of his long hair dragging on Jack’s face, and when Jack tries to adjust Charles fucks him again—easy, now, with a powerful rock of his hips, to hit deep. </p><p>Jack kind of laughs and kind of groans, struggles in a perfunctory sort of way and finds, to his delight, that he can’t move an inch. Charles’s face, so close to his, his crushing weight, his body, caging him. His grip, tight on his wrists. </p><p>Jack goes obediently limp. He strains forward with his fingers—the only parts of him that can move—to pat fondly at the top of Charles’s head.</p><p>“Happy?” Charles asks. He’s wolfish and glad.</p><p>Jack is.</p><p> </p><p>The <em> Saint-Antoine </em> is the kind of prize that comes once, maybe twice a year. It’s the last hoorah of the summer months, when sailing is easy and the trade routes are full. It’s enough gold and goods to carry them through the lean times. </p><p>It’s the kind of victory they could scavenge on for months, really, if winter didn’t make Charles insane. </p><p>For the longest time Jack thought it was boredom. Resentment at being pent up by autumn’s black weather, forced to stay ashore. But then they get beached in the summertime too, sometimes for weeks on end, and Charles never seems to mind being lazy when there’s reason for it. </p><p>So Jack moved to the next most likely scenario: somewhere in September or October, the anniversary of something awful. But the thought of Charles keeping a calendar in his head, tracking the passage of days and months… it seems absurd. </p><p>His latest theory is a hybrid of the two. That something of the situation—the short daylight, the crackling wetness of the weather, the sinister mood of the men—reminds Charles of <em> something</em>. A perfect storm of season and inaction and some other cocktail of ingredients wakens his body to dark thoughts, drives him to rile and fight and snap at anything that moves. </p><p>Anne has less patience for his bullshit than Jack, who is used to letting worse roll off his feathers. When Charles and Anne fight—Jack remembers Eleanor, the yelling and the broken ceramics, any single instance of which Jack would really, truly not tolerate—and thank god, it isn’t like that.</p><p>Anne and Charles fight like alley cats. Which is to say, they stand an appropriate four feet apart, standoffish and bristling, and talk at each other deadly low, like they know to engage in anything further would be mutually assured destruction. </p><p>Jack always feels a twinge of the old familiar guilt, though, seeing it. Mom and Dad, whispering in the kitchen. But he’s relatively sure it’s not about him this time, and anyways, they always work it out. </p><p>But he’s sure the latest episode—a seething exchange on the porch, Jack caught only bits and pieces—doesn’t bolster Anne’s feelings on the matter, when Charles disappears.</p><p> </p><p>At first it isn’t shocking. Sometimes, especially in the off-season, Charles goes missing for a day or two. A week. Two weeks. </p><p>He never tells them where he’s going, or even that he’s leaving. The tell-tale sign is his rings, which he leaves on top of the dresser. Wherever he goes, he doesn’t want to be wearing them—because they’re attention-drawing, they’re valuable, they’re recognizable, they’re too important to lose. Each option feels worse than the last. </p><p>It’s always hard to come searching for him in the room Jack has come to think of as <em> theirs— </em>scattered, variously, with Anne’s dirty dishes and her boots and Jack’s books and his trinkets—and see the rings there, left behind. Charles has so few possessions. So few things he’s gathered and has decided, for his own reasons, that he likes.</p><p>A week passes. Then two. Slowly but surely, November comes and goes. </p><p>Jack can barely hold the crew together. He tells them increasingly ridiculous stories, and they still lose half of them. They’re on track to lose more.</p><p>Anne is quiet. By the third Sunday she starts wandering down to walk the shoreline at dawn, and they both pretend they don’t know what she’s looking for. </p><p>Jack never goes with her, but he imagines it with crystal clarity, obsessively, no matter where he is or who he’s talking to or how bright and cheerful the morning. What it would be like—seeing Charles from afar, rocking in the surf, his body cold and dead.</p><p>Sex feels like going through the motions. Jack gets off, and Anne gets off, and Jack wonders when Charles took this from them—that they don’t feel complete anymore, without him. Not necessarily in bed with them. Not even in the same room as them. Just… around. Present. Existing. </p><p>Jack and Anne are two halves of a whole. They always will be. They would survive without him. They have before. But god. Jack would resent what Charles has done to them, if he weren’t so goddamn <em> sad</em>.</p><p>Then late one night, when the sky is black and heavy with rain, Charles returns.</p><p>There’s no particular fanfare. No apparent reason. The door opens, and Charles is there.  </p><p>Jack’s stomach wrenches. His heart <em> leaps</em>. In the very dim lamplight he can’t quite get a look at him, he wants to fly out of his chair and- </p><p>But with Charles, you can’t. You simply can’t. You have to wait.</p><p>Jack watches him shrug off his long leather coat and drop it on the ground. Then his shoulder belt and sword. Then his pistols. Boots on, he climbs into bed near Anne, flops down, and goes still. </p><p>Breathing is something Jack has to remind himself to do. Usually Anne and Jack are both of the same mind—to not pay Charles much of one when he’s like this, or, at least, to pretend that they’re not. Charles refuses attention. He doesn’t want it.</p><p>But it’s never been like this before either. Jack’s desperate to check that he’s whole. To check his body, to feel his limbs for breaks. To shake him violently, over and over, to take him to the bath, to find someone awake to make food for him, to wake them if they’re not, to embrace him. To hold him. </p><p>These are impulses he’s long learned to suppress. He’s had plenty of experience with Anne. The sacrifices he makes for them are of omission, rather than action.</p><p>So he swallows and tries to go back to reading, his eyes not catching a single word, tries to pretend the humid air doesn’t smell of iron. But he’s keyed up for anything, anything at all, and he catches it instantly when Anne shifts, a slightly disgusted look on her face. </p><p>Jack’s fairly sure Charles hasn’t moved, so he’s not sure where it’s coming from. He watches Anne turn his head up, and-</p><p>Underneath, a dark spot in her breeches. Charles has quietly been bleeding all over her. His bloody face has soaked a wet spot on her thigh. </p><p>For a long moment, Anne does nothing. It probably says something, that she doesn’t react much, that her expression stays much the same. </p><p>Frozen, Jack watches her touch her fingers under his nose. She makes a second pass, then, this time with her thumb. The gesture does nothing to staunch the flow of it; Jack suspects that wasn’t the point. </p><p>This is one of their communications to which Jack is an outsider, for which he can only approximate the shape of the meaning. By touching it, she’s confirming that it’s there, gritty and clotted and disgusting—and that the blood, Charles’s blood, and the fact that he’s leaking it all over her, doesn’t really phase her at all.</p><p>Anne isn’t gentle. It must hurt like hell, to be handled like that. But Charles’s eyes slide close at her touch, like she’s giving him water in the desert.   </p><p>“All right, Charles,” Jack says, closing his book.</p><p>Anne’s eyes dart up to him. She watches him approach with one of those kneejerk, guarded expressions, like her instinct is not to allow it. One of her hands is spread over Charles’s chest. The other, the bloody one, cradles his neck. There isn’t a wound there, not that Jack can see, but her palm is pressed there anyways, up against his skin. Covering the softest part of him. </p><p>Jack pours water from the pitcher into a large bowl and grabs one of his scarves. It’s his favorite, but it’s also the cleanest. There’s nothing for it.</p><p>When his weight shifts the bed Charles makes a noise in his throat, like he had the intent to say something, but decided against it. </p><p>They turn him over. Charles flinches when Jack lays the cool wet fabric against his forehead, wiping off the grime. Anne takes his long hair in her hand and holds it back, lets Jack work at the blood clotted in his hairline, his brow, the hollows under his eyes. The cloth comes back red and warm, and Jack rinses it in the bowl, cools it again.</p><p>When Charles’s face is recognizable, or no longer a mask of gore, at least, Jack rinses the rag out in the dingy water and nods to Anne. She shifts him somewhat upright, tilts his head back. Jack looks at his exposed throat, his absolute stillness, and knows that for Charles, this is no small thing. </p><p>He handles this knowledge as professionally and dispassionately as possible, firmly pinching the bridge of Charles’s nose. He catches up the last of the blood dribbling sluggishly down his lip and pushes the cloth up tight under his nostrils, pressing with the heel of his hand. </p><p>Charles stays very still. His breath comes wet and halting against Jack’s wrist. Jack wonders if this is what Veronica felt like, wiping the face of Christ. He doubts it was this awful. </p><p>There’s not much to do but look at him and wait. It’s hard not to think about the times before. Seeing Charles limp in after hours while him and Anne drank and ate and ignored him. He can’t stand the thought of it now. Can’t stand that they’d let him do this alone.</p><p>After a few long minutes, he gingerly peels away the cloth. The nosebleed seems to have stopped. He tosses the scarf in the bowl and sets it on the dresser.</p><p>“Stay,” he says. He makes for the door—then doubles back, hauls one of Charles’s boots off, then the other, drops them on the floor. Then he goes.</p><p>It’s late. Most of the staff are occupied, giggling behind closed doors, and it takes a few minutes to find an unoccupied girl to ask her, as politely as possible, for a pitcher of clean water. Drinking water. If she notices his bloody hands she says nothing, and retrieves him what he asked for efficiently enough. </p><p>Eleanor is nowhere to be seen. Jack isn’t sure if he’s angry or relieved. </p><p>When he comes back Anne’s managed to get Charles half up, leaning back against her. Jack pours him a cup of water.</p><p>“Will you drink this?” he asks. But Charles seems to be elsewhere.</p><p>Anne looks at Jack uneasily. Jack knows why. </p><p>Sometimes Charles gets hard for this. Not for seeing them again, or for being held, or even for the awkwardness of it. He gets hard for being hurt. Jack suspects that both he and Anne have gathered by now, or can at least make educated guesses, as to why.</p><p>But to deny him feels like shying away from the truth of him, somehow. Of his vulnerability, the things he lets them see. The best Jack can do is to look at him as he is and not flinch away. </p><p>“All right Charles,” Jack says. He sets the cup on the table.</p><p>Charles starts when Jack touches his shins, his thighs.</p><p>“Easy,” Jack says, and he goes still again. </p><p>At first, Jack had thought that when Charles gets like this, he wants to be used. If he’d asked, he suspects Charles would have agreed. It took time to realize that being made to feel less than human isn’t what Charles needs at all. Always, but especially not now. </p><p>So Jack has neatly packaged and stored the guilt for those memories away, the ways in which they’ve unknowingly harmed each other. In his darkest moments he wonders if relationships are nothing more than that: long strings of harming each other, with the best intentions, and hoping it will balance out in the end.</p><p>But he’s sitting here self-flagellating and twisting himself up over it—and Charles is looking at him now. Breathless. On the edge of apology. He never seems ashamed of sex, except when he’s like this. </p><p>“Steady,” Jack tells him. Charles looks like he can’t understand. He almost seems drunk. “It’s all right.”</p><p>It’s so different than usual—threading open his pants, taking him into his mouth. No teasing. Just steady and deep and warm. </p><p>Usually Jack is on his knees, and Charles’s hand is in his hair, angling him up to see him better, grinning, teasing, fucking his mouth, and Jack can accidentally drool a bit and not even care, because it’s fun, and it’s thrilling, for some reason Charles likes to do this with <em> him</em>.</p><p>Like this it’s quiet. Charles’s hands are open on the bed. He breathes unevenly, blinks up at the ceiling. He starts struggling a little when he’s close and Jack moves with him, doesn’t pull off or stop swallowing until he’s finished coming, quietly gasping, and has gone still again. </p><p>Jack checks and Anne is there with him, her face close to his, so Jack puts him away and gets up to retrieve his book from the table, to lean Charles’s sword against the nightstand, where he can see it if he needs to. He hauls Charles’s limbs over to make room and gets back into bed. </p><p>The frame groans, far too small for all three of them, but they’ve slept in narrower spaces, under conditions less suited for three. Jack takes up more room than he usually would; Anne does too. Charles is tucked between them, between the press of their bodies. </p><p>Anne resumes sharpening her knives, her eyes fixed on the door. Jack opens his book to somewhere near where he was. It’s clumsy, with only one hand. The other rests in Charles’s hair. </p><p>He strokes the locks under his fingers, stiff with blood and salt. Separates them, tucks them back from his face, scratches lazily at the roots while he reads. </p><p>At some point the rain starts again. It taps on the balcony. The breeze from the window is fresh and salty. Anne sharpens her knives. The sound is repetitive. A low scraping <em> shing</em>. Reliable. Like the sound of the sea.</p><p>Jack has reached a new chapter when he feels the lightest pressure on his side: Charles, turning his face into him, closing his eyes. Jack listens to his rattling breath slow and even out.</p><p>Jack will never ask why he has to have the fight beaten out of him to ask for tenderness. Just like Charles will never ask why Jack hates the smell of booze on his mouth, or why Anne will let only Jack sleep at her back, and no-one else. The list goes on.</p><p>It just is.</p><p>They just are.</p><p> </p><p>When Jack wakes in the morning, Anne is already gone. </p><p>Charles is sitting on the edge of the bed, facing away. He peeled his shirt off at some point in the night—can’t stand sleeping with it on—and by macabre habit, Jack catalogs new bruises. They’re scattered. Various colors. The largest and darkest is behind his right kidney, layered under the more familiar criss-cross scars. </p><p>He watches Charles rise stiffly, hands braced on his knees, for the tin cup of water Jack had poured him the night before. He downs it all in one long drink and pours himself another, downs that one too, then starts rooting around for his things.</p><p>Jack sees him linger at the dresser, sliding his rings back on. His eyes settle on Jack’s scarf, floating, ruined, in the bowl.</p><p>Jack doesn’t know why, but he closes his eyes again. He’s confirmed Charles is improved, which is all he was looking for. He recognizes the drive for what it is, as strange and absurd as it sounds: he wants Charles to have privacy. </p><p>He does listen, though, for the first time in a month, to the familiar sounds of Charles getting dressed. The soft leather <em> thwap </em> of him shrugging his coat on. The clink of his belt buckling. The fall of his boots.</p><p>Charles’s hand rests, heavy, in his hair. Then the boots walk away, and the door opens and shuts. </p><p> </p><p>Somehow Jack manages to doze off again. He wakes up from a sleep so deep he forgets where he is for a moment, and emerges in the late morning, feeling thirsty and disoriented.</p><p>A few girls are bustling around the floor, cleaning up the mess from the night before. For the moment Charles and Anne don’t notice him, sitting at their usual table in the corner. </p><p>There’s a plate full of food in front of Charles; Jack has no idea how it was procured at this hour. Charles is eating it with a kind of slow deliberateness. Anne is watching him, more intently than she means to show, Jack thinks. </p><p>Charles pushes a piece of meat with his fork. He says something, wryly. Looks up at her. </p><p>Anne’s face softens. She almost smiles.</p><p> </p><p>By January, the bruises are mostly healed and Charles’s face looks more like it always does. Banged up around the edges, but sharp and luminous and bright. </p><p>Jack registers this as Charles slams him into the ground. </p><p>He groans. He opens his eyes to Charles leaning down over him, hands on his knees, his hair a wild corona against the winter sun.</p><p>“You’re letting me win,” Charles says. </p><p>Jack can’t see his face and his tone is flat, so it’s entirely the fact that Jack <em> knows </em>him that he understands he’s taking the piss.</p><p>“Wow.” He forces his lungs to take in the air they very much do not want, at the moment. “Somehow you found a way to make this feel worse. Thank you. Thanks for that.”</p><p>Anne is sitting up on the wall, eating an apple, looking not unamused. Charles clasps Jack’s forearm and pulls him up. The strength in his arm, the very little work Jack’s body has to do to agree to get him upright, never ceases to astonish.</p><p>Jack rolls his shoulder and tries to walk off the pain and annoyance, pacing in a loose circle. He holds up his hand, shading his eyes, anticipates the question Charles will ask. </p><p>“Because I was slow on the riposte. Because my right guard is weak. Because I let you corral me to face the sun. Yes?”</p><p>Charles raises his eyebrows, tilts his head in acquiescence. Tosses him the sword again.</p><p> </p><p>“Honestly, you <em> enjoy </em> this feeling?”</p><p>Jack is sore. He’s sore in muscles he didn’t even know existed. He manages to get himself into a chair without sloshing his drink too much and hates being alive.</p><p>Across the bar Charles is completely at ease, a laughing whore in his lap. He’s enjoying himself. </p><p>Anne gives Jack an assessing glance, her cheeks warm with drink and maybe something more.</p><p>“It ain’t so bad,” she says.</p><p>No. Jack supposes it isn’t. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Listen, Black Sails has never done anything wrong, ever, in its life, but it really dropped the ball on Vane and Anne! Like, I get Vane’s relationship with Eleanor. I really understand its appeal for him, and I think it could coexist with whatever this is, but his dynamic with her couldn’t be like this! It’s too tied up in posturing and control. And ironically, it’s Vane’s power over Jack and Anne that allows him to be vulnerable with them. YOU KNOW? </p><p>Thanks for reading. ♥️</p></blockquote></div></div>
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